>I don't know where to
>start looking for the phylactery though.

Yeah, and that was my problem too. I just got really shameless about asking people, and played a couple characters in a row that had very few role-play conflicts with other people. It also helped that, back in the day, more people had the "locate object" spell/commune. That being removed made it slightly more difficult to figure this stuff out.

All that said, figuring out what all this cool, mysterious gear did, and how to get it, was one thing that kept me playing at a time when I was getting regularly curb-stomped by literally everyone in the game. (Now I get curb-stomped only semi-regularly. Hah.)

If you don't want to play a "friendly with everyone" character because you enjoy PK, then you could play a good-aligned character. Most other good-aligned characters are happy to share gear locations with you, and you still get to fight evils.

I forgot another thing that was added that helps: Illusionary gear. Used to be the highly limited stuff was never on the mob, but there was also no placeholder there to let you know it even came from that mob in the first place. Now you at least get the knowledge of what a mob can potentially hold, even if it's not there.

>4 it's clear to me why you'd want to keep the good stuff to
>yourself and I certainly don't hold it against you, but it is
>exactly the culuture I described in my first. Is it actually a
>good thing to have OP preps in the game for that only 1 person
>stumbles across them and gets to abuse them for all future
>characters?

No, it's not a good thing. But it's also very rare. And if something is "powerful enough" then it eventually gets discovered, shared, and nerfed if it really is that broken.

The only other preps I might not share are ones that are 1. limited and 2. I'm actively using/hording with my current character.